Defense department identifies remains of WWII Navy Seaman from SE Kansas

WASHINGTON (KWCH) — The Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company (DPAA) introduced Friday that Navy Seaman 2nd Class Pete Turk, 20, of Scammon, Kansas, killed throughout World Struggle II, was accounted for on Oct. 1, 2021.

In keeping with the Division of Protection, Turk was among the many 104 crewmen killed on Dec. 7, 1941, when a Japanese plane used torpedoes and bombs to assault the USS California, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor.

From December 1941 to April 1942, Navy personnel recovered the stays of the deceased crew, which have been interred within the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.

In September 1947, members of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred the stays of U.S. casualties from the 2 cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks. The laboratory employees was solely in a position to affirm the identifications of 39 males from the USS California at the moment. The AGRS buried the unidentified stays on the Nationwide Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), often known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In October 1949, a army board labeled the 25 Unknowns who couldn’t be recognized as non-recoverable, together with Turk.

In 2018, DPAA personnel exhumed the 25 USS California Unknowns from the Punchbowl for evaluation. DPAA scientists used dental and anthropological evaluation to determine Turk’s stays. Moreover, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evaluation.

Turk’s title is recorded on the Partitions of the Lacking on the Punchbowl, together with the others who’re lacking from WWII. A rosette can be positioned subsequent to his title to point he has been accounted for.

Turk is the primary of the lacking from the USS California to be accounted for. He can be buried on October 17, 2022, in Manhattan, Kansas.

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